


The Buttercup Prediction

by jazzfic



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-02
Updated: 2010-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-12 08:52:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale in three parts. Leonard realises that predicting patterns in life is a little harder than he'd thought. There's a red tent in there too, if you squint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Buttercup Prediction

Side A  
(Play.)

"Why?" asks Sheldon.

Over his oatmeal, Leonard tries to think of the safest, least complaint-provoking answer. He buys time by scraping his spoon around the edges of the bowl, pretending to be deeply interested in its rapidly congealing contents. Was that chip always there? He can't believe it's escaped Sheldon's no-flaw kitchenware rule, so fussy and fastidious as to make Buckingham Palace look like a student dormitory. He can feel eyes drilling into his forehead, bearing a look that he knows by unhappy experience will remain in place like a fossil set in stone, until satisfied with a reasonable explanation.

Which, in this case? Highly unlikely.

"Because..." Leonard gives up thinking and just says the first words that come into his mind. He waves a hand towards the window. "Because it's nice to get out of the hothouse once in a while. Be at one with nature. Stare at the stars, listen to the crickets--"

"It's _camping_ ," Sheldon supplies, eyebrows arched over an expression of calm detachment. And he tuts. He actually, goddamn _tuts_ , a little smile of sympathy jerking with annoying triumph at one corner of his mouth. He then continues in this theme by making an altogether unsubtle show of sighing with immense disappointment, and shaking his head. "It's a thousand mosquitos, all after the one thing your body will happily supply. It's being cold to your bones, and putting your sleep patterns so out of whack that neither they nor you will know which way's up."

Leonard shrugs. "Yeah," he says, smiling to himself, thinking already of three blissful, Sheldon-free nights ahead of him. That alone he figures to be worth as many mosquitos as Mother Nature in all her benevolence can possibly throw his way. Besides, with any luck they'll be so attracted to Howard's 'barechested-man-in-a-woodland-glade' cologne that Leonard will emerge bite-free and happy. "It's going to be _great_."

 

~

 

Raj is stopping by at 8.30 to pick him up, so Leonard makes the executive decision to haul his bags and tent into the lobby and wait there. There's only so much derision he can take from Sheldon before tiny, tingling sensations in his hands signal the familiar urge to throttle that walking, talking praying mantis. Who'd probably choose that moment to succumb to mitosis, pop out of his skin and multiply, Hulk-like and green, right there by the Batman cookie jar.

He's standing by the elevator, imagining likely escape scenarios involving fifty-three Sheldon Coopers and one panicky Leonard Hofstadter, and failing miserably, when he hears footsteps on the stairs and looks up to see Penny standing before him. She's all denim skirt, lacy sleeves and smiles. Leonard's heart sinks a little.

"Hey," he manages to get out. His vocal cords disappoint him by breaking twice over one lousy syllable.

"Hey, Leonard. I hope you've packed plenty of marshmallows."

There's goodness in her eyes, a genuine warmth that speaks volumes. His experiences in this grey area of post-relationship niceties are woefully short of hers; but he's getting better at it. Friendship is a surprisingly calming thing, so surprising that he wonders sometimes how he could have tried anything else.

"You bet," he says, just as Raj appears at the glass doors. He's wearing a fisherman's hat at a rakish angle, and gives them a happy wave. "Hey, I guess I don't have to warn you," Leonard adds, shrugging his rucksack over one shoulder, and gathering the tent in his other arm. He stands upright, wobbling unsteadily. "But Sheldon will be on his own, and at large. Just...FYI."

Penny smiles. "I know." He hesitates slightly but she says nothing more. She props the door open with Raj's help, and Leonard, feeling much like one of Hannibal's entourage, struggles through.

Raj pops the trunk. Leonard drops his tent with a thud. Then he looks at his friend and squints. "Why do you have little elephants dangling off your hat?"

"Dude. To keep the unholy flies at bay!"

 

~

 

So. Sheldon's predictions? Pretty much spot on. Damn all the smug cells in his damned Vulcan brain.

And Leonard's predictions? Woefully wrong. A single element of pure wrong, sitting neatly on the periodic table of wrongness, between way off the mark and flat out erroneous.

Especially the part about Howard's cologne. Which turns out to be the most brilliant mosquito repellent in the history of mankind.

 

~

 

It's late when they get back. Howard falls asleep one hour into the three-hour return trip, mostly on Leonard's shoulder, and mostly drooling, Raj having banned both of them from riding up front. Something to do with a tin of day old tuna being tipped by accident into the bag containing Howard's last clean socks and all of Leonard's spare shirts.

He struggles with his gear all the way up the stairs, stopping on each floor to wheeze air into his lungs, and scratch madly at any exposed skin he can reach. He's just about dropping to the ground, he's that tired. All he wants is a shower, a bucket of chamomile lotion, and his bed. And enough sleep to last a fortnight.

Sheldon, of course, will be asleep, mummy-like and cocooned in one of his predicted REM cycles. This Leonard doesn't have to hope, but instead know and rely on, because it's part of a pattern that has lasted twenty-nine years, and is as unlikely as snow falling in June to break.

So Leonard stabs his key into the lock, as quietly as he can, and leans against the door. He looks into the living room, through the dim dark light.

Well. He's wrong.

Again.  


~  
Side B   
(Rewind.)

 

"Why?" asks Sheldon.

Leonard makes a face. It's one Sheldon has seen many times before, a combination of uncertainty and badly acted indifference concealing the greater truth, which is Leonard stalling for time. The hard luck of such a hindrance of an IQ, Sheldon thinks, a little sympathetically. It must feel like a dragging anchor on the mind. He shudders internally at this image, and watches as his roommate jabs his spoon at the contents of his bowl. And _that_ will surely leave a mark. Sheldon adds a metaphorical quarter of a strike to Leonard's record, but says nothing.

"Because..." Leonard waves a hand towards the window, a gesture that Sheldon follows curiously with his eyes. "Because it's nice to get out of the hothouse once in a while. Be at one with nature. Stare at the stars, listen to the crickets--"

The hothouse? No, this won't do at all. It's supremely insufficient, hardly an answer to his calmly posed query. Sheldon does the only thing he can and rescues Leonard from meandering without reason into the verbal stratosphere. "It's _camping_ ," he says, very carefully. He shakes his head. Does Leonard really not see the insanity of this badly conceived plan? He supposes this must be true, or else there would not be a bright red tent currently occupying one third of the couch, objectionably close to his spot. "It's a thousand mosquitos, all after the one thing your body will happily supply. It's being cold to your bones, and putting your sleep patterns so out of whack that neither they nor you will know which way's up."

There is a long pause. Not so long for Sheldon to shift his focus to thoughts of a more productive nature, but long enough to make him all too aware that his friend is now smiling. It's the sort of awareness that resembles pinpricks on Sheldon's skin, an itch he doesn't appreciate at all. He frowns, and Leonard smiles even more.

"Yeah, it's going to be _great_."

 

~

 

It takes less than a minute for Sheldon to disconnect himself from the annoyances of breakfast and the more than useless conversation with Leonard. His higher reasoning allows him the luxury of letting these things slide away, to use a broad humanist term, and turn without fuss to the wealth of activity in his neocortex. He knows it is difficult for the others to understand this, and accepts it as a basic fact, part of the challenge of living as a dominant creature in a still-darkened world.

There are of course exceptions. His participation in Wii bowling, to take one example, would suffer enormously if he were not to allow himself a little play-acting (as it were) in the adrenaline charged hyper-reality that competition, winning, and _completely trouncing_ his lowly opponents appears to involve. After all, they're not Sheldon's rules; he's merely abiding the norm. Can the universe and all its laws be really to blame if he's just that good?

Sheldon makes the trip downstairs (counting every step, and keeping a watchful eye on the carpet thread and density underfoot, two millimetres being the only margin of error that an evenly spaced decent can take) with the plan to retrieve his mail.

But Penny is there.

Penny, dressed in her Cheesecake Factory uniform. Penny, leaning up to the mailbox, her heels off the ground. The yellow of her vest puts him in mind of buttercups, a field of drifting faces in long grass. He closes his eyes, too fast to be of notice, and allows his temporal lobe to do the work others would inaccurately label as imagination. One eighth of a second, no more, and then they are open and he is looking at her, waiting for the next step in this small, social dance. When it fails to come, he takes one all by himself.

"Good morning, Penny."

She turns. He observes that smiling lights up her eyes a millisecond before pulling at her lips. It is a curiosity he has noticed again and again, and yet none of the others seem to comment. Perhaps they don't care. But to Sheldon it is immensely intriguing, fascinating in a way he can't quite measure. He wonders if she is aware if it; feels both a slight disappointment in knowing the answer to be negative, but at the same time a strangely agreeable foretelling that one day, she just might be.

He realises that she hasn't yet responded to his greeting, so he follows it with a small smile. It's not nearly a match for hers, but to do so would be touching the realms of overabundance in wordless expressions, hardly appropriate for the mundane surrounds of the lobby.

"I can see you are on your way out," Sheldon says, hands behind the small of his back. He rocks a little on his heels. "Therefore I won't take up any more of your pre-work schedule. Apart from informing you that today I will be at home between the hours of 9 to 6, at which time you will be finishing your shift and be able to stop at Sichuan Palace to pick up dinner. Yes, I still call it Sichuan Palace even though I know it to be a _terrible_ lie, borne of Leonard's inability to prevent the foreclosure of yet another small proprietor in this city. You can be safe in the knowledge that stern letters have been sent to the local authorities despairing the failings of an economic climate which has allowed this travesty to occur." She's staring at him now. He blinks and stops rocking. "That is to say...Penny...you are welcome to join me this evening."

There is a moment of silence, while he waits for her answer. None comes. "Yeah, hey, so I just saw Leonard off," Penny says brightly.

Sheldon frowns. "Yes, he's going camping."

She looks at him a little longer and nods, tucking a handful of letters in her bag. He's thrown once again by her casual acceptance of bills that bear the hallmark of red stamps screaming _overdue!_ to all and sundry. The mere thought of allowing an account to slip into arrears has his heart jumping in several directions at once. But before he can lecture her on the virtues of conservative accountancy and an even ledger, she's got a hand on the door and is saying over one shoulder, in a voice less bright but no less sincere, "And Sheldon? That's very sweet of you."

 

~

 

In between calculations in the air, and electronic ones on his laptop, he spends most of the day wondering if being sweet equates in this instance to an affirmative answer. Otherwise how is he to know how much ice to freeze, how much consideration to place in the evening's DVD selection? There are too many variables to weigh. He really ought to go to the Cheesecake Factory and demand she respond correctly, this time without meaningless segues into Leonard's camping trip, or further distractions about her hodgepodge regard to fiscal propriety.

It might even be worth a strike, if only he could decide on what ruling.

At 6.01 he waits in his spot, thinking about causal loops, multiverses, and the merits of the original Stargate movie starring Kurt Russell and James Spader. And Sheldon does not think, in any way, shape or form, about yellow petals and cut grass.

 

~

 

At 6.23 there is a knock on the door.

She gets his order right, but her own completely wrong. Penny waves at him bravely with her chopsticks as her eyes gleam from the heat of her chilli kung pao chicken. She smiles and laughs through her tears, while he presses play on the remote. She sits by his side, still in the denim of her uniform, still with the lace and buttercup vest. Her hair is free on her shoulders, a little on the headrest, a little on the sleeve of his test pattern tee shirt. On screen the hieroglyphs spin and lock into place, a wheel of water flattens and shimmers, and Daniel Jackson places his hands upon its surface, touches what to all science is plainly impossible, and steps into the unknown.

It turns out that Sheldon has enough ice after all.  


~  
Side A  
(Reprise.)

 

Three days later, Leonard stumbles through the door. Penny and Sheldon are watching _Metropolis_ , the desk lamp and television the only light in the quiet room. They are side by side, the flickering shapes of a bygone era reflected on their faces. Leonard takes in the sight of them, lets his gear drop with a soft thud to the ground.

"Hey," he says.

"Leonard," says Penny. She smiles in the dark. And he wonders, though he isn't sure, but he wonders if that's her hand, touching Sheldon's. "You're back. Oh, Leonard, this is a really great movie."

Sheldon looks down at her. " _Penny_. And you claimed you wouldn't like it."

There is a hint of triumph in his voice, entirely predictable, the pattern of Sheldon Cooper through and through. Leonard though, standing by the door and swaying near sleep, standing in his dirty laundry and unfurling red tent, thinks it might actually be pride.


End file.
